Wednesday, 10 September 2014

Energy Budget Tight for Many Small Businesses http://www.energy-broker.co.uk/energy-budget-tight-for-many-small-businesses/

A new survey carried out by the Federation of Small Business (FSB) has found that almost a third of it’s members said the cost of energy was a barrier to growth for their company.

Carried out across the 8,000 FSB members, the survey revealed that the cost of electricity, water and gas for their business remains a significant concern for owners. With little spare capital to invest in renewable energy solutions such as solar panels, it seems that as many corporations are able to make grandstand launches of energy efficiency measures (like Microsoft’s solar-powered offices or Google’s wind-turbine-fuelled data centres) smaller businesses are being left behind.

According to Mike Cherry, FSB national policy chairman, the options for smaller businesses are limited.

“Small firms do have the appetite to be more energy efficient, namely because of the obvious benefits to keeping the cost of doing business down. However, for firms to take on energy efficient measures in real numbers, they need the payback to be quick and the upfront costs to be small.